Notes from the room.
What we've learned designing and facilitating retreats for leadership teams. Practical writing on alignment, culture and execution from two former executives.
How to Plan an Executive Leadership Retreat That Changes Behavior
Judge a retreat by what leaders do differently afterward. Six planning steps from two former executives who design and facilitate executive retreats.
Mike Fromhold and Brittany Tipton · 6 min readRead the articleArticles and every newsletter issue.
The Human Advantage in the Age of AI
This past weekend AI priced two dozen retreat venues for us in under an hour. It couldn't tell us which one would make a team feel like they matter. That part is still ours.
Mike Fromhold · 3 min read
What Makes a Leadership Keynote Worth the Hour
Most keynotes are forgotten by the following Monday. The ones that change how people work share a few traits, and none of them is a better slide deck.
Mike Fromhold and Brittany Tipton · 3 min read
Why Retreat Priorities Stall After the Offsite, and How Coaching Keeps Them Moving
The window between a great retreat and a forgotten plan is about two weeks. Here is why priorities stall, and what keeps them moving.
Mike Fromhold · 2 min read
When Your Best Performer Becomes a Manager
The skills that earned the promotion are rarely the skills the new job needs. What new managers need, starting with how their words land.
Mike Fromhold · 2 min read
How to Carry Retreat Priorities Into Every Department
An executive team can leave a retreat aligned while every department keeps doing exactly what it did before. Here is how the priorities reach the people doing the work.
Brittany Tipton · 2 min read
How to Turn Company Values Into Everyday Behavior
Most companies have values. Far fewer have values you can see in how people act on a Wednesday afternoon. Here is how leaders close that gap.
Brittany Tipton · 2 min read
Why Executives Need Peers Outside Their Own Company
The higher a leader climbs, the fewer people tell them the truth. Peers from outside the company are often the ones who still will.
Mike Fromhold · 2 min read
IT Architects the Technology. The CEO Architects the Enterprise.
Only 12% of CEOs say AI has delivered both higher revenue and lower costs. The companies getting a return have a CEO who owns the architecture.
Mike Fromhold · 2 min read
AI Is a Tool. Start With the Problem.
Every company exists to serve a purpose, and AI is one of the tools to get there. The order you think in decides whether it pays off: outcome, then problem, then tool.
Mike Fromhold and Brittany Tipton · 2 min read
Why AI Tiger Teams Stall
Handing AI to a small, smart team feels decisive. Most of those teams end up with impressive demos and very little change in how the company works.
Mike Fromhold · 2 min read
How to Help Your People Use AI With Confidence
People adopt AI when they feel safe experimenting, see their leaders go first and know what it means for their own role. Here is how leaders build that confidence.
Brittany Tipton · 2 min read
Five Questions to Answer Before Your Next AI Pilot
PwC found that 74% of AI's economic value goes to the top 20% of companies. The leaders in that group answer five questions before they approve the next pilot.
Mike Fromhold and Brittany Tipton · 2 min read
5 Signs Your Executive Team Is Misaligned (And What to Do About It)
Misalignment rarely looks like conflict. It looks like a hard-working team that keeps producing less than the sum of its parts. Here are the five signs we see most, and the fix for each.
Mike Fromhold · 6 min readWhat Is a Culture Assessment and Why Does Your Leadership Team Need One?
Most senior leaders believe they understand their culture. The information that reaches the top has been filtered on the way. A culture assessment shows the culture people experience today.
Brittany Tipton · 5 min read
The Culture Gap: Why Leadership Alignment Is Often an Illusion
Most leadership teams believe they're aligned. Then the organization starts to operate, and the signals fragment. The space between agreement and behavior is the culture gap.
Brittany Tipton · 3 min read
Executive Burnout Is a Leadership Systems Problem
Executive burnout rarely looks like collapse. It looks like competence without energy. The usual explanation is workload. The more accurate one is design.
Mike Fromhold · 3 min read
Why Leadership Development Works Best Off-Site
Slide decks, webinars and generic frameworks don't match what leaders face today. The leaders who grow fastest build judgment and self-awareness in rooms designed for depth.
Brittany Tipton · 4 min readWorth Following
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Built from 40+ years of leading teams inside multi-billion-dollar companies.